Avatars and shadow accounts: new details on Hamas’s preparations for October 7
More than two years after the October 7, 2023 attack, new details are still emerging for the first time.
These details, published by Israel’s Army Radio, came from Israeli military sources, who described what they referred to as Hamas’s preparations for the attack, without specifying the source of the information.
The Israeli army, however, seized large quantities of materials from Hamas centers in Gaza and arrested hundreds of militants during the war.
According to Army Radio, Hamas monitored nearly 100,000 Israeli soldiers on social media for years.
It reported: “Hamas’s military intelligence system, which collected the information for the October 7 attack, consisted of about 2,500 members. The Israeli army estimates that the intelligence gathering lasted five years, starting in 2018.”
It added: “Hamas operations rooms monitored around 100,000 soldiers on the networks for years. From the millions of posts published by the soldiers, the movement assembled pieces of a puzzle that formed the complete picture of the attack.”
It continued: “Hamas did not limit itself to monitoring public accounts; it also created avatar accounts through advanced social engineering and added them as Facebook friends or Instagram followers of soldiers and officers known to have private or restricted accounts.”
Shadow accounts
The report also revealed that Hamas “successfully planted shadow accounts in WhatsApp groups belonging to the Israeli army, including groups of Egoz unit recruits.”
“This is how they monitored people for years, until they became officers and later commanders. Imagine Hamas tracking someone from the moment they lead a platoon until they become company commander; this gives them a complete picture of nearly every company or battalion in the Israeli army,” Army Radio reported.
It added that “Hamas intelligence issued daily reports on routine army activity: the location of each company, of each Iron Dome battery, whether the Israeli army made changes to force deployment, or secretly shifted units from one sector to another.”
It stated: “Cross-referencing thousands of pieces of data gathered from the networks made it possible to obtain sensitive information on key formations and units within the army.”
The broadcaster added: “By cross-referencing images and videos taken inside bases—ranging from soldiers’ TikTok videos to photos from military ceremonies—Hamas built accurate models of our forces: the location of rear guards, surveillance cameras, the rapid response team in the outpost, and the weapons depot.”
3D simulations
The report continued: “In this way, Hamas built maps, simulations, and even simulators. It purchased a 3D simulation program at a 1:1 scale, allowing it to build simulators for bases and outposts. Elite fighters could use virtual reality headsets in Gaza and train for infiltrations into Israeli positions.”
Army Radio also revealed that Hamas “built physical models of outposts in the Gaza envelope area and sent its fighters to train on them.”
It added: “In Israel, it was known that such models existed, but a senior officer said: ‘We never imagined how accurate they were.’”
Another officer, who served for years at an Israeli Air Force base and reviewed Hamas’s plan to storm the base, said: “Hamas knew this base better than I did.”
